STMicroelectronics to support HD WM9 compression

June 14, 2004

STMicroelectronics and Microsoft announced that the two companies are jointly working to develop a series of new integrated circuits that support Windows Media 9 Series compressed content, in both standard and high definition, to a wide range of devices, such as set-top boxes and DVD players.

STMicroelectronics will supply these new components to CE manufacturers to enable fast market delivery of appliances such as set-top boxes, DVD players, digital video recorders (DVRs), portable media centers, home-networking devices and more that support a variety of Windows Media 9 Series audio and video technologies.

In addition to standard formats, this support includes: Windows Media Audio 9, which provides playback of high-quality, two-channel audio with efficient compression; Windows Media Audio 9 Professional, which delivers 5.1 or 7.1 channels of discrete digital surround-sound at bit rates as low as 128Kb/s and supports 24-bit resolution and 96kHz sample rates; and Windows Media Video 9 (including VC-9), which delivers high video quality at all bit rates, including HD video, with up to six times the resolution of DVD-video, at approximately one-third the bit rate of MPEG-2.